


Let It All Go

by sunshineflying



Series: One More Night [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-23
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-12-21 03:22:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineflying/pseuds/sunshineflying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alternate Ending (read in place of chapter nine) of the chaptered fic, I Stop Using My Head.</p><p>Niall becomes a girl, asks Harry for help, they end up with the baby, and Niall's crossing his fingers in hopes that he turns back. Alternative ending in which things may not go Niall's way, but he still ends up happy all the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let It All Go

**Author's Note:**

> I was torn between two different endings, and I realized that I should just post both! I'm happier with the ending of I Stop Using My Head, but I wanted to share what almost happened instead! Hope you enjoy :)
> 
> You should definitely read I Stop Using My Head first, otherwise this probably won't make a lick of sense.

Weeks passed after Meghan’s birth, but nothing was changing. Niall was still a female. It wasn’t going away. He wasn’t changing back and he didn’t understand why. That piled with the pictures Gemma was sending him of his own little baby, Niall didn’t know how to handle anything. He cried himself to sleep almost every night and Harry didn’t know what to do. He’d even asked the others in the band, but they had no idea.

The six month deadline approached, and when Niall still hadn’t turned back, management convened a meeting to discuss options. “Now… we obviously need an exit plan for Niall. He can’t give the address on his own, but perhaps we could talk his parents into it,” Paul rattled off. “They could give an address, say that Niall is grief stricken and depressed and needs personal care for the foreseeable future, so he’s ducking out of the band. Then Niall could step in and spend time with you guys as Harry’s new girlfriend. He’d need to choose a new name and we’d have to set up a bio for him up to this point.”

Niall kept his eyes focused on his lap, his feminine fingers twisting and wringing in his lap as he fought tears. “If you want to try to keep him in the band, we could try to spin a sex-change story but it would take a while and the balance of the group would completely change,” Paul suggested. “It would be a complicated story to garner support for, but we could do it.”

Niall didn’t want any of that. He wanted to be male Niall, in the band Niall, and most importantly, not some mangled version of his former self. But this was all out of his control now. “Niall? What would you like to do?” Paul asked.

He just shrugged, because he had no idea. Niall hated being in this female body. It wasn’t so much the fact that being a female sucked, because he knew lots of girls loved it. It was the fact that he wasn’t himself anymore and it felt completely terrible. “Well, what does the rest of the band think?” Paul pressed, glancing around at the rest of the guys.

Harry couldn’t speak. Zayn avoided Niall’s eyes and Louis looked guilty. Liam took a deep breath and said, “We think the first would be the easiest route to go. But…”

“Perfect!” Paul said with a bit too much enthusiasm. “Now obviously that would mean we’d have to quell the Larry and Ziam rumors even more, but…”

“Excuse me!” Louis shouted angrily where he stood from his seat.

He glared at Paul and then asked, “Have you no decency? Niall’s obviously choked up about it. You’ve no right to start sounding so happy that we’re moving ahead without him. If I had my way we’d say a band with the five of us, or no band at all.”

“No,” Niall spoke up immediately. “You lot are not breaking the band up over me. Paul’s right. It’s always been mostly you four hasn’t it? So… carry on, yeah? I’ll come in as some new girlfriend or something. Tour from the back stage.”

But Niall’s words were filled with tremors of fear and sadness and Harry’s hand covered Niall’s under the table as soon as he heard what came out of his mouth. Louis slowly sat down and Liam looked guilty for inadvertently starting it all. “Zayn? Haven’t you anything to say?” Paul asked.

Zayn just swallowed hard. “I really just want Niall to be happy, yeah? Is that so hard to ask?” he spoke up solemnly.

The tone of the room – so filled with frustration and sadness and confrontation – it wasn’t doing well to put him at ease. Zayn just wanted Niall, one of the five of them, the guy that had been eating and laughing with them since the beginning, to be happy. “Well I’ll be honest with you mates,” Niall said, and half the room snapped to look at him in puzzlement because of his feminine voice. “At this point nothing will really make me happy. I don’t like being like this. I don’t want it but it’s the hand I’ve been dealt. So do what you think is best for the band and I’ll just… do my thing.”

But that was just it. Without the band, Niall didn’t really _have_ a thing. He had Meghan, and she was in someone else’s care. He had Eleanor, but she went to Uni and worked and spent time with Louis. He had Harry, but little good that did Niall when Harry had world tours and CD promos to do near constantly. What Niall once had taken for granted, he no longer had. One Direction was moving in one direction, and that direction was far away from Niall whether he liked it or not.

Paul tried to coax some sort of final decision out of everyone, and they came to the agreement that Niall was going to leave the band to cope with the loss of a family member (and it had been made up, which made him all the more guilty) and that if Niall so chose, later on he could be introduced as Harry’s girlfriend with a name change, creation of a background story, and more. It sounded exhausting and like more work than Harry or anyone was really willing to do, so Niall just said he’d think about it.

And of course, as he always tended to do, Niall went home and he wept. He cried into his pillow, into Harry’s shoulder, and well into the night after Harry had slipped off to sleep while Niall’s tears subsided. He liked this, laying with Harry and feeling so strong and protected in his arms. But he didn’t feel like himself and that was the whole problem – and it was the problem that would never be solved.

To make matters worse, lying on behalf of Niall so that he could exit the band was the last thing his parents wanted to do for him. They didn’t support this “choice” to switch (even though it hadn’t been a choice, he insisted adamantly), nor did they support the fact that he’d had a child. Niall’s conservative Catholic family didn’t want anything to do with him, and they were promised that helping him duck out of the band was the last thing they’d ever have to do.

It seemed that was the last straw.

Niall started locking himself in his room, blocking out even Harry. Nobody knew what to do but it was affecting the rest of the band and management, whom Niall really didn’t _have_ to conform to anymore, was on his case about it. But those calls went unanswered, as did the calls from everyone else, and the only communication he made with the outside world was to Eleanor, who held her tongue. She didn’t want to break Niall’s trust in her.

More than anything, she was trying to think of a way to help him.

So, while she and Louis were out to dinner after he’d spent the day in the studio and she’d spent the day studying at Uni, she listened intently to him as he chattered on about Niall and the shit situation they’d all ended up in thanks to Paul. But as Louis talked on and on about Niall and what he was like, Eleanor realized something. Niall’s problem was that he all of a sudden didn’t know what to do with himself. He was lost with no direction. He needed help.

 _I think you should do something with your life. Something new_ , she had sent to him.

Niall stared at his phone in frustration but humored her by asking, _Like what?_

She mentioned that it would be a surprise, that they should chat over coffee the next morning, and begrudgingly Niall had agreed. They met for coffee on Eleanor’s campus, and she was beaming as she approached with a manila folder and a head full of ideas. She just had to hope that Niall would go for them. “As your new best friend, I have the right to tell you my whole idea before you ever try to shoot it down. Okay?” she said as she sat across from him.

Niall handed her an iced coffee and sat down with his own steaming mug of coffee. He was filled with trepidation but didn’t say a word. “I think… maybe if you got to Uni and started doing something more with your life maybe things will get easier for you again,” Eleanor began without little preamble. Niall stared at her like she was crazy, but her enthusiasm never faltered. “I already talked to management and we can put together an identity for you. They know the right people, we can file for a name change and documents for your admission to Uni, and you and I could be dorm mates. I’ve always wanted to live in a dorm.”

It was overwhelming for Niall, but he’d figured that he had nothing to lose so he might as well give her idea a go. They sat at the café for hours planning out Niall’s new identity. It was unnerving to say the least, but Niall understood that he had no other option. She and Niall worked together at the café for weeks before he ever felt like telling anyone else.

Harry was the first to find out.

Niall and Harry were lounging about Niall’s flat, something he’d been nervous to do at first because Harry might go on and on about the band and it would hurt Niall too much to really hear it. It was easier to just shut Harry out than risk that pain. But thankfully Harry didn’t say a word about it. Harry was quite sweet, actually. He brought Nando’s for dinner as well as a film he thought Niall would enjoy, and they sat about the living room watching the movie and munching on Nando’s for hours. Harry wore sweatpants and a plain low-cut v-neck shirt, and Niall had taken to his new body and wore simple yoga pants and a form-fitting tee shirt.

Harry found his eyes glancing over Niall’s cleavage, which was still larger than it had once been thanks to the lingering effects of the pregnancy, but he kept his hands to himself. Harry knew that Niall wasn’t at all interested in sex now after giving birth. He didn’t blame him at all, quite frankly. But Harry had purchased condoms just in case the time would ever come where Niall would trust him again.

When the film ended and Harry flicked at the remote to shut off the entertainment center, Niall just curled up against Harry, his petite feminine form fitting into all the right places of Harry’s taller, muscular body. “Hey Harry?” Niall said softly.

“Yeah?” Harry asked kindly, his voice matching Niall’s in softness in the dim lighting.

Niall took a deep breath and told him softly, “I… I’m going to move on with my life. I’m not changing back. I have to stop waiting on that to happen and just… accept that this is who I am now.” Harry wasn’t quite sure where the conversation was going, but he didn’t want to ruin the way they seemed to be having an open conversation without tears, so he just nodded and glanced over to Niall, who continued. “I’ve been talking to Eleanor a lot, and… and management, even though they’re almost done with me. I erm… I’m going to go to Uni. I’ll get a dorm with Eleanor and study music or something… and I’ve got to have a female identity. I can’t go around telling people that I’m Niall Horan because I’m obviously not anymore.”

Harry was saddened at that, and he spoke up to try to protest, “Nialler…”

“No,” Niall shook his head adamantly. He looked up at Harry with a strong but soft expression, his feminine features making his anger seem far less intense, and he said, “Don’t, okay Harry? I know who I am and the people that matter to me know who I am, and that’s got to be enough. But… once I step onto that campus in the fall, I’ve got to accept the fact that to all these other people, I’m not Niall Horan. I’m… I’ll be Natalie Browne. Natalie Browne from Galway, parents deceased, no siblings. Paying for Uni on inheritance, sold the family home to add to the bank account. I… I’ve no living relatives and I’m the last of the family, and… I met Eleanor when we became roommates. Easy enough.”

Niall hated having to come up with such a story. He wished he could just return to being that carefree boy on the X Factor who came from a supportive family in Mullingar. “I don’t like to speak about my past, so I don’t have to worry about massive backstories. I’m shy and quiet and I’m not going to Uni to meet people. I’m going to… to study, and that’s it. When I’m gone, it’s because I like being independent and on my own. I won’t be going with you on tour, because that would get mad suspicious, but I’m still your…” he almost said boyfriend, but he knew that he should say girlfriend. Instead, he just said, “I’m still yours.”

Harry looked down at Niall sadly. The whole situation was taking its toll on Niall, he could tell. But Harry also understood that this was really for the best. “Have you been accepted to Uni yet?” he asked, now well aware that he was attending the same school as Eleanor.

“Yeah,” Niall said with a shy smile. “I got my letter last week.”

“Congratulations,” Harry smiled, his expression genuine and loving. “I’m happy for you, Nialler. And, by the way, I’m _always_ going to call you Niall. No matter what.”

“Good. You had all better do just that,” Niall said simply, relieved that Harry hadn’t been upset with Niall’s decision. “I’ve only chosen a girl’s name for my ID card and Uni. That’s it.”

Harry was just glad that Niall was beginning to set his life back on track. Already he seemed just a tiny bit happier. It was only a matter of time until Niall was thriving in this new life he had created for himself out of necessity. Harry hoped someday Niall could accept who he really was now, though he couldn’t quite imagine how.

And thankfully, Niall was able to do just that. When Harry returned from tour with the rest of the band, they found Eleanor and Niall waiting patiently in Harry and Louis’s flat, big smiles on their faces. Both of them wore dresses and had their hair styled in relaxed curls. High heels adorned both pairs of feet, and Harry and Louis just stared at their dates for a moment. “It’s time to show the world,” Niall smiled as he walked effortlessly over to Harry.

In the heels he was only four or five inches shorter than Harry, a much kinder difference than the six or seven when he was bare footed. Harry just smiled and looked down at Niall, amazed to see such a change in him. He embraced his appearance, at least when it came to his wardrobe, and now they were going to show the world that they were together, even if Niall had to lie about who he was. Eleanor and Louis shared a kiss, and for the first time in a long while, Niall and Harry did the same.

The date went well, the paparazzi went wild, and at the end of the night, Niall finally trusted Harry again. He’d missed Harry immeasurably and he knew that after the ordeal of having Meghan, neither of them would be stupid enough to let that happen again before they were entirely prepared. Niall was taking birth control pills and still made Harry wear a condom, and as time passed they realized that they were okay. They could be intimate without consequences.

And Meghan grew, and she learned, and when her first birthday rolled around Niall was comfortable with being around her. He babysat when he wasn’t studying or spending time with Eleanor and a small group of friends they’d formed at Uni. Meghan was all smiles and curly hair and she made Niall smile all the time. And seeing her with Harry was the cherry on top; Niall knew that Harry was the one, and that they were good together, and more importantly the whole ordeal had taught Niall one very important thing. It didn’t matter who he was or how he looked – Harry would love him for who he was. And more than that, Niall now had the confidence he’d lacked before. He could be whoever he wanted and bounce back from setbacks and still come out stronger in the end.

He was invincible, and they were meant to be.


End file.
